Celebrity Journalism Done Right

`Entertainment Tonight` Has Thrived For 10 Years By Putting News Ahead Of Hype

March 27, 1991|By Rick Kogan, TV critic.

History-full of dusty facts, shining moments and angry conflicts-contains no record of the first celebrity.

Perhaps it was the shaggy character who came upon a couple of dry sticks, decided to rub them together and thereby created the first flame.

``That him,`` I can imagine some caveperson grunting. ``That Unga-Tunga. He the man invent fire.``

``Ugh,`` says his friend. ``Me go get autograph.``

Leaping ahead a few millenniums, we arrive in 1981 and the premiere of a TV program that took the notion of celebrity to its absolutely logical and inevitable extreme.

That program was ``Entertainment Tonight,`` and it offered daily half-hour and weekend hourlong doses of news and gossip from the ever-expanding realms of entertainment and celebrity.

Produced by Paramount Domestic Television, ``Entertainment Tonight``

(6:30 p.m. weekdays, WBBM-Ch. 2) and its weekend edition, ``Entertainment This Week`` (midnight Sundays), celebrates its 10th anniversary this year as the most successful non-network show in TV history: It airs in 180 markets and is the No. 1 syndicated show with adults in the 18-to-49 and 25-to-54 age categories.

But on a less easily measured level, the show has had a profound influence on the medium.

With its innovative, Emmy-winning graphics, ``E.T.`` set a flashier tone for the way TV looks. It also changed the way we, and TV news operations, look at celebrities and entertainment, not as glitzy trivia but as newsworthy product.

``E.T.`` did not, on its own, invent the TV concept known as infotainment. But it polished it to a high gloss.

With the format of a traditional news program and content that`s strictly entertainment, it was and is one of TV`s most fascinating hybrids. When

``E.T.`` arrived-and thrived-the TV line between news and entertainment was irrevocably blurred.

The show was the brainchild of Al Masini, who also created such shows as

``Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous,`` ``Solid Gold`` and ``Star Search`` and must be considered a genius among TV syndication sorts.

Undeniably fluffy at the outset, ``E.T.`` changed with the arrival, late in its first season, of Jim Bellows, the charismatic former editor of the scrappy Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He became the show`s managing editor and brought to it a journalist`s hunger for news and distaste for hype.

``When we cover a party,`` Bellows instructed his troops at the time,

``we`re not there to taste the shrimp.``.

They were there to ``cover the star front,`` and they did it in ways never before attempted. It was the first daily, syndicated show to be broadcast the same day it was taped, pioneering the satellite-fed programming that is now the broadcast standard.

If the ways and means were thus solidified early on, the anchoring teams remained in a state of flux.

The show premiered with actor Tom Hallick, former Miss World Marjorie Wallace and critic Ron Hendren as its anchors. Hallick was dumped after a month, and Wallace was gone a month after that, replaced by Dixie Whatley who, in turn, was replaced by Mary Hart in fall 1982.

Whatley moved to the weekend anchor desk, alongside Steve Edwards, who was there for a year before being replaced by Alan Arthur, who was replaced in fall 1984 by Robb Weller. Weller arrived from Chicago to co-anchor the daily and weekend show, the latter with another new arrival, Leeza Gibbons.

A neat fit

Rona Barrett, the Hollywood gossip maven, was on the show for a year, as was Bill Harris and . . . that`s enough name-playing.

The current principal daily anchors are Hart and John Tesh, who came on board in 1986. Gibbons-an aggressively perky type-and Tesh generally handle weekend chores, with major contributions from Pat O`Brien, Gayle Gardner, Garrett Glaser and film critic Leonard Maltin, the only person with the show since its inception.

How neatly Tesh and Hart fit.

She is so perky that she appears to have come from an ``Andy Hardy``

movie, while he hints at the contemplative roles (and look) of William Hurt. Her occasional breathlessness is tempered by his muted cynicism.

Hart is best known for having her legs insured for millions and making a popular exercise video; Tesh is a composer who has won two Emmys for his music. She`s flashy, he`s taciturn. She`s the cheerleader, he`s the student body president.

In those contrasting ways, they mirror the show itself: ``E.T.`` has the ability to remain serious even as it is being star-struck. And however one may carp, ``E.T.`` is a hell of a show.

To watch ``E.T.`` is to be amazed at how much is packed into each 30 minutes: its news reports, interviews and behind-the-scenes video punctuated by such longer features as ``Inside Story,`` Tesh`s ``The Insider,`` Hart`s

``See-Saw`` and Maltin`s video picks.

It`s all put together-packaged and paced with pizazz-by the 100 staff members in Hollywood, and from bureaus in Chicago, New York, Tokyo, Nashville, London and Washington, D.C., as well as from regional producers in nine other U.S. cities.